


Dirt Under Your Skin

by Accidentallytechohazardous



Category: Bleach
Genre: Bondage, Developing Relationship, Japanese Rope Bondage, M/M, Rope Bondage, Strangulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 11:14:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1345432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accidentallytechohazardous/pseuds/Accidentallytechohazardous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mythology paints divinity as an overpowering, blinding brightness. The true light of gods than vaporizes mere mortals to ash or of angels whose bodies burns with fury and starlight. Izuru’s eyes were like that, cold and scorching like a supernova, a star hanging in the airless, loveless void of space and exploding in a storm of fire as it died.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirt Under Your Skin

It was the eyes, he supposed that were the first sign. He would never say that they were the reason for everything, of course. He was drawn by Izuru’s strength, his wit, his loyalty, the facets of his personality that bring people so much closer to Izuru than he imagines. But even when they met, as younger and more naive versions of themselves, Renji could tell there was something about him.

Mythology paints divinity as an overpowering, blinding brightness. The true light of gods than vaporizes mere mortals to ash or of angels whose bodies burns with fury and starlight. Izuru’s eyes were like that, cold and scorching like a supernova, a star hanging in the airless, loveless void of space and exploding in a storm of fire as it died.

But maybe that’s just Renji being dramatic. Even so, he can’t stop himself when Izuru turned those bright blue eyes on him, out of his Shinigami: A History textbook, and gave him a concerned frown and an insistent furrowing of his brows from under a fluffy fringe of bangs that had only just started to get too long. “Are you feeling alright, Abarai-kun?”

Those eyes sent shivers seeping into Renji’s bones. It sat under his skin, raising gooseflesh. He can’t quite explain the words for it.

Renji huffed irritatedly, not moving from his position of his arms comfortably pillowing his head on top of his own book. “Of course I am! Why are you asking.”

The eyes disappeared in a flash for less than a second under a flicker of light lashes. Izuru propped his cheek up with his fist, and smirked like he knew that was exactly the kind of response Renji would give. (It was, but that’s besides the point.)

“You looked really deep in thought.” Izuru said, (Don’t sound so surprised about it, asshole.) “I wondered if there was anything heavy on your mind.” (Is he being sarcastic?)

Renji hushed his inner monologue. He swallowed and idly wondered what trivial thing he could lie about thinking of, and think of it quick, but don’t look at his eyes, don’t get flustered just from the sight of his face.

“Nothing, just tired.” He looked down at his desk and then dared to look back up at Izuru, and his heart stops and stammers because of those stupid fucking eyes.

Izuru shrugged in a “what can you do” sort of way and gave him a sympathetic smile. And Renji focuses on looking at Izuru’s nose because he can’t look at his icy, bright, creepily beautiful eyes. They give him a strange sense of excitement, like standing at the edge of a ravine or wandering through the woods after dark. Something dangerous, but thrilling. He thinks he remembers the word.

“Bewitching”, he thinks it is.  
\- - -

Half a century later those eyes aren’t quite as bright, but what they’ve lost they’ve made up for in coldness. They shine frigidly like beetle shells or the crisp frost on dead trees. Decades of misery and suffering, and Izuru still shines somehow.

Other things are different, too. The sheepdog-fringe had grown further down his forehead, hiding that haunting gaze. Renji wondered, from time to time, if he could run his fingers through Izuru’s hair would it be as soft as it looked when he was a boy? He never dared to try in the academy. Never got too close. That should have been his graduation quote. 

Renji’s hair got longer, too. He wonders if Izuru liked long hair, or it’s all just a big, mixed-up coincidence in his mind. He’s learned, since his school days, he had a tendency to befuddle things like that, and tell himself there were ulterior motives and secret codes. Something bred from hostility and intuition. Something instinctive that feared instinctive things like fire and shadows and pain.

But it’s still not quite the time for thinking things like that.

“I just… I think I’m finally ready to accept it.” Izuru said. His hands clenched and unclenched the rails on the porch, fingers writhing like spider legs. “Cap- Ichimaru. He’s never coming back.”

Saying the words aloud seemed to have a physical effect on him, his body untensing like a knot undone.

“You’re better off without him.” Renji said. He hoped it sounded a lot more reassuring than it sounded to his own ears. He reached out and clapped a hand down on Izuru’s shoulder, half-expecting the other man to shake him off.

Izuru breathed out through his nose. “I know.” He doesn’t sound happy about it. “I just kept thinking- somehow- that when this was all over, we could get things back to the way they were. I’m not even sure why I wanted that in the first place. It’s just… what I’m used to, I guess. The same old song.”

Renji restrained himself from looking at the ground like he did back then. It feels too private to pry, too potent and contagious. “You’ll get the hang of it. Everyone does.”

Izuru chuckled dryly. “I can only hope I’m like everyone.” His lips tightened, those blue eyes flick over to Renji’s direct and pin him with the weight of their gaze. “Do you hate me for what I did? Even a little?”

He didn’t even bother to feel offended, just rolled his eyes in a way that he hopes communicates the full stupidity of what the question means to him. “Of course I don’t, dumbass. You’ve been my friend for ages, I could never hate you.”

Izuru hummed thoughtfully. As if Renji had just said something profound. It felt extremely ironic. “Thank you, Abarai-kun.”

For a moment, time froze like that, with them staring at the persimmons tree outside Izuru’s office. Against the muted gray of the dusk sky, the tree looked frail and dark. Renji had to admit, it was a picturesque scene. Quaint, in a morbid sort of way.

And at that point something in Renji’s resolve broke, crumbled apart like solid earth above shifting tectonic plates. A huge, rising something.

Renji’s body moved without his permission, but a more romantic version of himself liked to imagine it as the puzzle pieces of his surroundings being whisked into place. Because one moment he was standing beside Izuru, reveling in brotherly camaraderie or something like that. The next moment Renji had the front of Izuru’s shihakusho balled up in his fists, hanging on as if Izuru might try to escape him. His eyes were squeezed shut and he had to unclench his jaw in order to press his lips against Izuru’s in what felt like an inappropriately juvenile kiss.

Izuru, idiot that he was, was slaw-jacked underneath him. So really it was less of a kiss and more Renji kissing Izuru’s lolling open mouth. Renji could have kicked his ass, and then followed up by kicking his own ass for this.

He released his hold on Izuru, pulling his face away and breaking the one-sided kiss. Izuru’s eyes- the ones Renji was quite fond of- were wide open. They had probably been the entire time.

“Why did you do that?” Izuru asked breathlessly, looking pale and anxious. Like Renji’s gonna bite his head off or something

“You’re so stupid.” Renji growled, spinning around on his heel before stomping off and he doesn’t even care if it makes him look immature anymore. Just. Fucking. Fuck it.

\- - -

But it’s a different kiss that comes later than has Renji being the one afraid. When Izuru cradled his face between his hands, long, bony fingers tentatively exploring his cheekbones and the hard lines of his jaw. And suddenly Renji regretted the first kiss, wishes he could go back and redo it right or maybe erase it from existence entirely. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel so stupid and over his head now. Izuru, after all, is the one with beautiful coldness in his eyes, wise and wicked gems that grow more clever with each passing day. It’s just as bewitching.

And Izuru kissed him softly, and the world kind of faded away to this blank backdrop while Renji considered that yes, this is in fact happening, and yes, those are his hands on Izuru’s hips and on the pipe-cleaner corners of his elbows, trying to hang on when Izuru breaks the kiss and pulls away.

“You should be my boyfriend.” Izuru said, and the words are childish but the voice is completely sincere. He got this look on his face, like he’s not ready to smile until he gets an answer.

Renji gulped and flushes. “I should be.” He agreed. And he had the same jittery, enthralled feeling as he did when he was at Shin’o only this time he knew it’s not because of something sinister and controlling that lurks in the corners of Izuru’s eyes. It’s just fondness.

\- - -

There’s still a lot of sadness in Izuru. There are the kind of feelings that ache all over like old battle-scars, and Renji knows what it’s like to have those on his body and his psyche. But if Izuru’s sadness was wounds, there might not be an inch of his skin left to see under the matted tissue and mottled, abused flesh.

Renji can’t lie, at least not when Izuru isn’t around. It can be draining sometimes, seeing someone like that, and not being able to chase those feelings away. It’s a constant, empathetic, painful pull that resonates in his own chest. The kind that pulses and echoes against his ribs with a ring that sounds almost like “Can’t I ever make you happy?”

\- - -

Some things make Izuru happy. And for that, Renji is happy to oblige.

It’s taken a little bit of practice to get the knots just right though. And for all the rope burns and bruises acquired in the learning process, Izuru is nothing if not an eager test subject.

He thinks it’s like a punishment, the way Renji wraps the rope around his neck and wrists, crisscrosses it across his chest in neat little diamonds. He does like to watch Izuru strain, become awash in this always-sudden realization that he’s not in control, not even close. Izuru thinks Renji is taking control when he pushes Izuru down onto the mattress and sinks his teeth into the temptingly soft flesh of his slim neck, which fits so easily wrapped around his fingers.

Izuru relishes the punishing, the release of frustrations on both sides, it lights him up inside with a rosy glow blushing all the way across his papery skin. Renji’s happy to let him think so, but that’s not completely accurate. This is Renji being kind, rewarding him. He’ll fuck Izuru rough and hard and until he can’t move even if he wasn’t all trussed up. Because if that’s what Izuru wants, he is completely willing to provide. Whatever Izuru wants, Renji will provide. He’d burn down cities and swallow the sun and rip the world inside out if Izuru even gave the slightest indication that was what he wanted. No, he could be so much meaner. He could be so much more cruel. He knows he could.

He could wrap himself around Izuru like dead weight, like an anchor, like a noose, like a corpse on his back. He could press his fingers against Izuru’s throat, pushing down on the delicate little pipe that carries air. The one that bobs and stutters with breath. And Izuru’s eyes would dilate and go shiny with pleasure and tears and spit would roll down his chin in streams. And just when Izuru was most vulnerable and complying, Renji could lean in and hiss in his ear, “Smile for me, Izuru. Fake it. Pretend I make you happy. Tell me that I’m good enough, and I’ll give you everything you need.”

Izuru’s mind is used to being tampered with and warped. It’s not like Renji has much of a chance of fucking him up more than he already is.

Other times, the role is switched. He likes it a lot more than he’d ever admit, when Izuru fixes him with a glare- and he thought he was over all those conflicted, heavy, captivated feelings for those eyes- and tells Renji that before the night is over, he’s going to scream and cry and beg for more. When he draws things out of him, humiliating moans and whines and Izuru is still looking down at him with that commanding, hungry gaze and only a crooked smirk to tell Renji that he’s pleased. That Renji doesn’t have to worry about going out of his way to make Izuru feel something, all he has to do is let go of his pride and let himself be used, get fucked hard and slow and lose himself in the sensation. Its a euphoric feeling.

\- - -

Izuru likes to stay up into the late hours of the night, on the precipice where it’s almost too late to even bother going to bed at all if not for sheer exhaustion. It feels like a time where everything is at a standstill, and every reasonable creature has gone to sleep and abandoned the world for the night owls and midnight creepers. He hangs his arms and neck out the window, eyes fixed on the purple-black sky and finger lazily trailing the leaves of the shrubs just outside.

Renji watches him like this, still splayed in a tangle of sheets and his own limbs on the futon and face half-smushed into the pillow. The faint light of a rapidly approaching dawn is overwhelming to his groggy and dark-adjusted eyes, and he can’t stop himself from squinting at the pale light like a newborn instead of a grown man.

Izuru sits back on his haunches, looking surprised to see Renji awake. Surprised, but not displeased. He smirks at Renji’s discombobulation. Renji half-throws one arm over his face, but even that’s too much effort.

Besides, the dawn really does look beautiful. Especially the way the soft, fragile light slowly bleeds into the darkness, the way it illuminates Izuru in a waxy-white glow. It’s worth being awake for that.

“‘S pretty.” Renji mutters, looking back out the window. There are still a few persisting stars. He counts all the constellations he knows. He wonders, vaguely, if the position of the stars are different here than they are in the World of the Living. He should have Izuru research that for him.

“Hmm.” Izuru makes a throaty noise like he agrees, pillowing his hand on his arms against the windowsill. His cheek is nestled in the crook of his elbow, bright blue eyes still fixed on Renji’s prone form lying in bed.

Renji drops his arm down from his face, rubbing at his eye until bright little lights pop in his vision. He blinks himself to full awakeness and tries to pull himself up on one shoulder. “What are you looking at?”

“You.” Izuru smiles, thin lips pulled upwards at the corner rather brazenly. It’s a little startling to see Izuru smile in any way that isn’t shy and small. Renji likes it. “You’re lovely.”


End file.
